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T O P I C R E V I E W

Robert Pearlman

Google announced today that it will be hosting LIFE Magazine's entire photo archive -- about 10 million photos -- with about 20 percent of the collection now online.

We're excited to announce the availability of never-before-seen images from the LIFE photo archive. This effort to bring offline images online was inspired by our mission to organize all the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. This collection of newly-digitized images includes photos and etchings produced and owned by LIFE dating all the way back to the 1750s.

Once you are in the archive, you can access full-size, full-screen versions of each image. If you decide you really like one of these images, high-quality framed prints can be purchased from LIFE at the click of a button.

The potential of this project for space history enthusiasts should be obvious, but if it's not, try browsing the results for such keywords as NASA, astronaut and Mercury...

Richard Easton

That's a great find. I searched on Vanguard and found many interesting pictures which I forwarded to Vanguardians. Thank you for pointing it out.

KC Stoever

I'm speechless. A longtime dream realized.

heng44

Some very interesting stuff there, but their search engine is terrible. You never know if you have all the photos of a certain event or flight. Some Ralph Morse photos can be found under his name, while others from the same series can not. But I'm not complaining.

Robert Pearlman

As Google is the search expert, I would venture a guess that the engine is purposely limited to prevent someone from writing a script to mine the archive.

Still, intentionally hobbled or not, I'm having great fun digging through the galleries...

spaceman

Fantastic, what a resource. Pity you can't just buy the prints though!! Once you start searching you never know where you will end.

Rob Sumowski

WOW!

And yea Kris... what great family shots... your family album just doubled. I'm very happy for you!

rjurek349

Wow - just some fantastic shots. Been spending time cruising for various candid shots. And there are some great ones.

There are a couple of really cool ones of Neil Armstrong at the Conrad's during Apollo 12, for example.

There is of course Neil among the ladies with a Cheshire cat grin...at the Conrad's during Apollo 12. And then later at the bar, playing it cool and listening in.

Loads of fun. Thanks for posting, Robert.

gliderpilotuk

That IS great news. What nostalgia.

I just love the opening taster shot in this thread. I wonder what Glenn was thinking?

nasamad

Agreed a great resource, there are loads of great images that I have never seen before, it would be nice to see the prices lowered so I can actually afford to buy them.

I have no need for an archival print with a matte in a nice frame, just an 8x10 on good paper that I could get signed!

It seems that many archives charge alot for images, I know museums do for the ones in their collections.

KC Stoever

Thanks, Rob S. I have a lot of these, but there are a few I've never seen. I suppose everyone has noticed some infelicities with the labeling.

The Project Mercury scuba training shots, taken in the pool are, IIRC, taken not at the Cape but at the Officers Club near Langley AFB--maybe in Newport News? I remember it was right on the water. I learned how to swim there.

There was a lot of editorial direction and coordination apparent, when I worked with the contact sheets maybe 7 years ago. Training, hardware, suits, and shots putting the men in offices and centrifuges were all important.

But for the family shots, the LIFE photographers very methodically shot families at play (golf for the Shepards, archery for the Carpenters, a bike ride for Gus and Betty), in the kitchen--dinner prep, meals, homework--at bedtime, storytelling.

Perhaps the most self-consciously intimate and stilted photos are those of the CCGGSSS couples alone, after dinner, the lights low. Hah! Engineering test pilots in love

SpaceDust

As KC pointed out above, there seems to be a lot of mislabeled photos in descriptions and with dates. But one caught my attention for an Edward Hoskins that they called an “astronaut”. Was he an “astronaut” or an engineer in mislabeling? He’s not in the NASA bios so, if he was an astronaut why doesn’t NASA claim him and what happened to him? Was he with the MOL project and just didn’t join NASA's astronauts once it was canceled? There were four photos that I saw of Hoskins and some were with the Apollo 7 crew. Anyone know more about him?

gliderpilotuk

quote:Originally posted by nasamad:I have no need for an archival print with a matte in a nice frame, just an 8x10 on good paper that I could get signed!Adam

I agree Adam. Only after I read your post did I realise that it's "framed or nothing". There are some images I'd love to have but I'm not paying for the privilege of deframing it. Not sure if it's possible to contact the producer to see if they will sell unframed.

Robert Pearlman

It makes sense that LIFE would not allow individual (unframed) prints to be purchased. The value of their archive is that it is unique: if they started to offers prints at a reasonable price and without any hindrances to scanning, anyone could start duplicating and selling copies, to say nothing of their being propagated across the web.

gliderpilotuk

So what's the difference? Just deframe, scan and print.

I have just spoken with them and they WILL be offering unframed prints in the New Year!!

Robert Pearlman

It is probably a moot point now given their response, but I would think that the price of the framing would certainly discourage many from unframing the print.

It is great news that they are going to sell prints, but it will be interesting to see what, if any terms and conditions they apply and what pricing model they adopt.

gliderpilotuk

Well, as I predicted, unframed prints are now being made available from the LIFE archive. I just received my first two. There are NO conditions precedent, but the prints come with a subtle LIFE semi-transparent logo bottom right that doesn't detract IMO.

I don't think this is yet being marketed widely but I went onto QOOP (via the Google LIFE image page) who are the printers of the photos and contacted them directly. They then created a special link for me to select and order the prints I wanted. Costs are very reasonable at $9 for an 8x12; $15 for an 11x14. International postage is pricey. Note that image quality seems good for these sort of sizes but not for larger, e.g. 16x20. Maybe this is one way of protecting the IP.

Klaatu

A friend of mine just sent me the link to here... there's some great photos of Yuri Gagarin on his world tour. Keep scrolling down...